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This sponsored film for the Tyne Improvement Commission, produced by Turners Film Productions, documents the shipping, trading, engineering, shipbuilding and passenger services along the River Tyne. The film records the industries that cluster along the Tyne focusing on wood, petroleum, coal, fish and iron ore. The services provided to shipping by the Tyne Improvement Commission and other authorities are documented, together with the transport facilities and sites available for new industries in the area. The film includes footage of the construction and launch of the 'Northern Star,' built by Vickers Armstrong's Naval Yard in Newcastle, and launched by H.M. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, on June 27 1961.
An amateur film shot in Newcastle during some of the worst winter weather recorded in the region in February 1941. The film shows various suburban and city centre streets under snow and people and vehicles attempting to negotiate them. The film also shows two well dressed women walking beside the River Tyne at Corbridge, a ladies garden party and three people exploring the ruins of a stone structure, possibly a Roman site near to Hadrian's Wall.
This documentary study compares traffic congestion in central Newcastle upon Tyne during the Christmas period in the early 1960s with the city centre in the late 1960s after urban re-development. Footage includes the busy shopping street of Northumberland Street, the main A1 England to Scotland road at the time, and the city centre around 1967 when pedestrian schemes and the start of the urban motorway programme demanded by city leader T Dan Smith were underway. This film is part of the Newcastle & District Amateur Cinematographers Association (ACA) collection.


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February 11th, 2013
Grammys 2013 Rewind: Our 5 fave performances
If you went by the number of awards handed out during the Grammys telecast, the show would only be an hour long.
But to fill the other two-and-a-half hours, the awards ceremony books some of the biggest acts to put on a concert for us viewers at home. While some years have been lackluster, the 55th Grammys had an embarrassment of riches - we could barely narrow down our list of favorite performances.
With the exception of one or two "why is this happening on stage?" moments, nearly everyone brought their A-game. Here's our top five, with a few extra nods to personal jams below. Which performances were your favorite?
1. Jack White, "Love Interrupted" and "Freedom at 21"
Jack White's "Blunderbuss" didn't win the best album Grammy - that one went to Mumford & Sons for "Babel" - but he was a strong contender for best performance of the night.
Jack White – Love Interruption & Freedom At 21... by IdolxMuzic
2. Tribute to Levon Helm
Between Elton John, Mavis Staples, Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard and Mumford & Sons, this tribute was an amazing moment to watch.
3. Miguel feat. Wiz Khalifa, "Adorn"
Miguel didn't get his Grammy win in the best urban contemporary album category during Sunday's Grammys telecast but, like Jack White, he owned his moment on stage. We're not sure why the Recording Academy opted to do the remix of "Adorn" with Wiz Khalifa, but we'll take it.
mig&wiz by yardie4lifever2
4. Justin Timberlake, "Suit & Tie" feat. Jay-Z and "Pusher Love Girl"
Granted, the Grammys went a little overboard with the Justin Timberlake love on Sunday, especially considering how many other talented performers were in the house last night. Still, we loved his performance of "Suit & Tie" with Jay-Z, and appreciated his introduction of the new song "Pusher Love Girl" from his album.
5. Kelly Clarkson's tribute to Patti Page and Carole King
We still remember Kelly Clarkson killing it on "American Idol" with "Natural Woman," and we were blown away with her finesse of that song and "Tennessee Waltz" on Sunday.
HD Kelly Clarkson Tribute to Patti Page 2013... by dm_51188e7423dd3
Honorable mentions:
Black Keys, "Lonely Boy"
TBKeys by yardie4lifever2
Tribute to Bob Marley
bobtribute by yardie4lifever2
Frank Ocean, "Forrest Gump"
Frank Ocean Grammys 2013 performance by dm_51181cced0274
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subset: commoncrawl


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From Indian War to Civil War
Virginians, meanwhile, sharply disagreed over the best way to fight the Susquehannock War. When, in March 1676, Governor Sir William Berkeley and the General Assembly set about planning a series of frontier forts and patrols, many objected, arguing that the forts would be expensive and useless. They suspected all Indians, even allied nations living within the colony, of being enemies of the English. In Nathaniel Bacon, an ambitious young newcomer to Virginia who had recently been appointed to the governor's Council, they found a leader. With William Byrd I, Bacon had engaged in the Indian trade. When the Indian raids reached as far south as the falls of the James River and the overseer at one of Bacon's properties, known as Bacon's Quarter, was killed, Bacon's sympathies forever shifted away from the governor and Council and toward those who wanted immediate action against the Indians.
In May Berkeley declared Bacon to be in rebellion, expelled him from the Council, and called for the election of a new House of Burgesses, to convene June 5. Simultaneously, Berkeley invited the forthcoming assembly to join him in petitioning Charles II for a new governor. (If he were at fault, Berkeley figured, then let the people say as much.) Bacon, still a wanted man, was elected a burgess from Henrico County, and his men now controlled much of the colony. In fact, Bacon's armed retainer in Henrico prevented the sheriff there from reading the governor's proclamation condemning Bacon and his men, and they may have intimidated voters into casting their ballots for him.
In a dramatic scene before the statehouse, burgesses crowded at the windows and watched as Bacon's men drew their arms and Berkeley bared his chest, daring Bacon to shoot him. Up to this point, the burgesses had not been particularly friendly to Bacon, going so far as to issue an endorsement of Berkeley's leadership, but now they feared for their lives. One of the burgesses waved a white handkerchief in surrender, and soon they had agreed to alter the pending legislation to name Bacon "commander in chiefe of the force raised, and to be raised dureing this Indian Warre." Bacon also pushed through a statute pardoning "all treasons" committed since March 1. Berkeley reluctantly agreed.
Jamestown Burned
Meanwhile, in the last days of August Bacon's small navy located Berkeley's hideout on the Eastern Shore and bottled up the loyalists at Arlington plantation, John Custis II's magnificent Northampton County estate near the mouth of Old Plantation Creek. Berkeley, however, outwitted Bacon's officers, capturing their ships and their crews, many of whom had served Bacon only under duress. The rebel commander, William Carver, and four other men were hanged between September 3 and September 6, among the first of Bacon's men to suffer that fate. By then Berkeley's commander, Captain Thomas Larrimore, was already on the Chesapeake Bay gathering a fleet, quickly adding at least ten vessels to the four he had captured from Carver. Suddenly, Berkeley controlled the Chesapeake and its watershed.
With the governor safely on the Eastern Shore, Bacon plunged back into the woods and swamps in a fruitless search for Indians while other groups of rebels looted the estates of suspected loyalists. Then, suddenly, on October 26, 1676, Bacon died. He and the bulk of his following were in Gloucester County at the time, with Bacon staying at the house of Thomas Pate. He had been ill with typhus and dysentery, or what the colonists called the "Bloody Flux." His body was buried at a secret location so that, in the words of Thomas Mathew, it could not "be Exposed on a Gibbet as was purpos'd."
The Rebellion after Bacon
The most bitter and sustained fighting of the rebellion commenced in November. There were local struggles between neighbors in northern Virginia and on the Southside, and a series of loyalist raids on the York River garrisons that brought back dozens of rebels to hang or languish in jails on the Eastern Shore. Despite these raids, however, rebels retained control of nearly all of Virginia outside the Eastern Shore.
Royal commissioners Berry and Moryson sailed into the mouth of the James River on January 29, and Jeffreys arrived on February 11 at the head of the English troops. The commissioners' instructions assumed that the rebels had taken control or that the fighting was still underway, so there was a brief pause while they considered the situation. Friction between Berkeley and the commissioners began almost from the outset. Although they sat with Berkeley as a court, condemning the last eight of the twenty-three rebels to hang, they castigated him for his harshness in suppressing the rebellion.
As their mutual dislike intensified, the commissioners began to favor an interpretation of the king's instructions that would require Berkeley to leave immediately for London, leaving Jeffreys as governor in his place. By late March they had concluded that "those who stile themselves the Loyall Party are the onely chiefe Disturbers and Obstructers of the Peace and Settlement of this calamitous Country." The trouble, they said, was that Berkeley and his men had tried and punished rebels using wartime rules of military justice even though they had been captured after the rebellion, had hanged men who fell under provisions of the king's pardon, and had looted the estates of alleged rebels with no pretense of due process.
For his part, Berkeley noted that the commissioners incorrectly dated the end of the rebellion to late December, so that confiscations during the last month of fighting did not count, for them, as wartime actions. He also denied enriching himself with confiscated goods, insisting that the proceeds had fed loyalist forces fighting for the king.
Berkeley sailed for London several days later, vowing to tell his side of the story to Charles II. He had been in poor health for some time, however, and the voyage did him no good. On June 16 he was invited to see the king, but was already "so unlike to live," the bearer of the invitation reported, that it would have been "inhuman to have troubled him." He died on July 9 without telling his version of the past year's remarkable events.
Moryson and Berry arrived in London later that summer, submitting a final report that included "A True Narrative of the Rise, Progresse and Cessation of the Late Rebellion in Virginia." The report glossed over the deeper causes of the rebellion in favor of a story that blamed a few bad men, such as Bacon, for misleading "the giddy-headed multitude" during the crisis in Indian affairs. This, along with their account of Berkeley's alleged misconduct in aftermath of the rebellion, became the official version of events. Jeffreys, still serving as interim governor, died in office two years later, having made himself profoundly unpopular with Virginians during his term in office.
The causes and consequences of Bacon's Rebellion were not so simple. Considered from the perspective of the Pamunkeys, Occaneechis, and Susquehannocks, it was obviously about Indians. It was sparked by conflicts with Indians, and Bacon and his followers devoted considerable energy to pursuing Indians. Although the rebellion was suppressed, subsequent governors generally heeded the call of Bacon and his successors for a harsher Indian policy. As Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood summarized the situation, "a Governour of Virginia has to steer between Scylla and Charibdis, either an Indian or a Civil War," for Bacon's Rebellion was caused by Berkeley's "refusing to let the People go out against the Indians." Not coincidentally, Virginia Indians' fortunes declined precipitously in the generation following the rebellion.
In short, Virginians faced a combination of falling tobacco prices and a heavy tax burden. Beverley's "splitting the colony into proprieties" referred to the granting of the land on the Northern Neck to private individuals, which prevented the colony from selling it. Faced with this loss of revenue, the General Assembly dispatched agents to London to argue for the grant's revocation. This cost money. So did the General Assembly itself: as the royal commissioners recognized, taxes to pay the members' expenses during frequent assemblies were "Grievous and Burdensom." So too did the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1674), when the Crown had forced Virginia to build a useless and expensive fort at Point Comfort.
Berkeley frankly acknowledged the discontent among the populace, particularly among the small planters who could least afford these extraordinary taxes. Much of the discontent, however, focused not on Berkeley but on the local elites who controlled county governments, which actually levied most of the taxes. When the royal commissioners solicited grievances from the counties after Bacon's Rebellion, they were met by a torrent of complaints about high local taxes that did not seem to benefit the people at large and could only be paid in tobacco—a crop the large planters had in abundance, but which others could produce only with great difficulty.
Under these circumstances, Berkeley's plan to build frontier forts struck many frustrated and frightened planters as unhelpful. They figured that it would be cheaper, and perhaps more satisfying, to simply attack Indians wherever they could be found. Bacon's success came largely because of his ability to direct these people's fear and anger toward two targets: Indians and Berkeley, who was, according to Bacon's wife, Elizabeth Duke Bacon, "the Indians' friend and our enemy." Although Virginia's elites were divided over the rebellion and provided the leadership for both sides, small planters who were disproportionately threatened by the Indian war and burdened by taxes tended to lean toward Bacon's side in the conflict.
After Bacon's Rebellion the planter elite consolidated its power over the colony, but there were winners and losers even among the gentry. Losers in the struggle tended to be newer men, like Bacon, who had not been in the colony long and who may have resented the power and privileges of established elites. Those who gained the most were an older gentry who had helped found the colony decades earlier or, most importantly, royalists who had fled to Virginia in the 1650s following the English Civil Wars. These members of the Washington, Randolph, Carter, and Lee families, to name a few, would dominate Virginia for many years to come.
Time Line
1675 - By this year, Nathaniel Bacon, with William Byrd, is participating in trade with some of the Indians on the southwestern border of settled Virginia. His antipathy of Governor Sir William Berkeley, who also participates in the trade, may date to this time.
March 3, 1675 - Governor Sir William Berkeley appoints Nathaniel Bacon one of several new members of the Virginia Council of State.
July 1675 - Skirmishes between frontier settlers and Doeg and Susquehannock Indians in the Potomac River valley stimulate widespread fear of organized Indian raids, fears heightened when Virginians learn of the outbreak in New England of what comes to be called King Philip's War.
March 1676 - The General Assembly meets in Jamestown to prepare for defending the colony. The assembly enacts laws to erect forts along the fall line to try to keep friendly Indians at peace with the colonists and to cut off the Indian trade temporarily to reduce contacts that might flare into conflicts.
May 1676 - Governor Sir William Berkeley expels Nathaniel Bacon from the Council and brands him a rebel. Bacon is the leader of militiamen in the upper reaches of the James River valley and is preparing, against the governor's instructions, to attack friendly Indians.
June 5, 1676 - The House of Burgesses gathers in Jamestown. Among the participants is Nathaniel Bacon of Henrico County who, with James Crewes, is engaged in a rebellion against Governor Sir William Berkeley in part over Bacon's intentions to attack Virginia Indians.
June 6, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon and a company of armed men arrive in Jamestown, where Bacon is seized by armed agents and taken before Governor Sir William Berkeley and the General Assembly. Bacon apologizes on bended knee for his rebellion. Berkeley pardons Bacon but then changes his mind.
June 23, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon returns to Jamestown with 500 men and demands Governor Sir William Berkeley commission him as a general to lead the colony against the Indians. After a standoff, the governor yields to Bacon's demands.
July 1676 - Governor Sir William Berkeley reverses course and again declares Nathaniel Bacon a rebel and travels to Gloucester County to recruit men to fight him. Bacon and his men march to Middle Plantation, the site of present-day Williamsburg.
July 30, 1676 - On about this day, Nathaniel Bacon issues the first of a series of declarations of grievance and complaint against Governor Sir William Berkeley, together with justifications of his rebellious actions, which he signs as "General, by the consent of the people."
August 3, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon, in rebellion against the Virginia governor, obtains the endorsement of seventy leading Virginia men to his leadership against the Indians.
August 4, 1676 - Thirty additional Virginia men endorse a more radical declaration of grievance from Nathaniel Bacon, who demands a new assembly be chosen under his authority rather than recalling the one that met in June. Bacon then marches to the lower Rappahannock River and attacks the friendly Pamunkey Indians.
September 1676 - Governor Sir William Berkeley returns to Jamestown with a small force and issues another proclamation against Nathaniel Bacon.
September 1, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon's small navy locates Governor Sir William Berkeley's hideout on the Eastern Shore and bottles up the loyalists at the Arlington plantation of John Custis in Northampton County.
September 3–6, 1676 - William Carver, a commander in Bacon's Rebellion, and four other captured men are hanged by Governor Sir William Berkeley.
September 7, 1676 - Governor Sir William Berkeley, having battled and defeated some of Bacon's rebels on the Eastern Shore, retakes the capital at Jamestown without firing a shot.
September 13, 1676 - Having arrived at Jamestown behind his enemy, Governor Sir William Berkeley, Nathaniel Bacon orders his rebels to lay siege to the capital.
September 18, 1676 - Governor Sir William Berkeley abandons Jamestown, which is under siege by forces under Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon's men occupy and burn the capital the next morning.
September 18–19, 1676 - When Nathaniel Bacon's forces occupy and burn Jamestown, William Drummond sets fire to his own house as a sign of support.
September 19, 1676 - A day after the capital is abandoned by Governor Sir William Berkeley, Nathaniel Bacon orders his men to "laye itt level with the Ground." They burn Jamestown.
October 26, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon, in the midst of leading a rebellion against the governor of Virginia, dies of dysentery at the house of Thomas Pate in Gloucester County. Joseph Ingram takes command of the rebel troops.
October 27, 1676 - King Charles II of England signs a proclamation for putting down the rebellion in Virginia led by "Nathaniel Bacon the Younger." The king does not know that Bacon died the day before.
November–December 1676 - After the death of Nathaniel Bacon, William Drummond refuses to surrender and continues to resist the governor's forces.
November 1676 - The most bitter and intense fighting of Bacon's Rebellion comes after the death of Nathaniel Bacon the previous month. Rebels retain control of nearly all of Virginia outside the Eastern Shore.
November 19, 1676 - Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson leave England for Virginia. They have been commissioned to put down Bacon's Rebellion and investigate its causes.
December 3, 1676 - Colonel Herbert Jeffreys and Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley, wife of the Virginia governor, leave England for Virginia. Jeffreys has been commissioned to put down Bacon's Rebellion and investigate its causes.
December 25, 1676 - Forces loyal to Governor Sir William Berkeley rout a garrison of rebels on the Southside during Bacon's Rebellion. Over the course of the next week, the two main rebel commanders (based on the York River) are persuaded to switch sides.
January 22, 1677 - Governor Sir William Berkeley, in exile on the Eastern Shore during Bacon's Rebellion, returns to the capital at Jamestown.
January 29, 1677 - Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson, dispatched from England to quell Bacon's Rebellion, sail into the mouth of the James River.
February 11, 1677 - Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, dispatched from England to quell Bacon's Rebellion, arrives at the head of a thousand English troops.
April 22, 1677 - As the English commissioners leave Green Spring after saying goodbye to Sir William Berkeley and his wife, they are insulted that Berkeley's coach is driven by the "Common hangman." They walk the several miles to their landing on the James River rather than endure the insult.
May 1677 - Following Bacon's Rebellion, Sir William Berkeley sails to England to plead his case with King Charles II.
Summer 1677 - Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson submit to the king their report on Bacon's Rebellion. In "A True Narrative of the Rise, Progresse and Cessation of the Late Rebellion in Virginia" they find blame both in Nathaniel Bacon and Governor Sir William Berkeley.
July 9, 1677 - Before he can gain an audience with King Charles II, Sir William Berkeley dies at Berkeley House in London.
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Rice, J. D. Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677). (2014, October 3). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Bacon_s_Rebellion_1676-1677.
- MLA Citation:
Rice, James Douglas. "Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 3 Oct. 2014. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: August 25, 2011 | Last modified: October 3, 2014
Contributed by James Douglas Rice, professor of history at SUNY Plattsburgh. He is the author of Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson (2009) and Tales from a Revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America (2012).


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The fact that someone from Nintendo is currently in sole possession of a video of a Kotaku writer playing Birdseye Bullseye has nothing to do with our willingness to publish the following post.
Almost as an afterthought I agreed to sample Wii Fit Plus last night during my visit with Nintendo reps in New York City. I learned that it is not as much a sequel to Wii Fit as a replacement for the original in the market. But I'm in good shape. I don't need this game. Maybe its new balance games would make me want it?
Here's what I tried:
Snowball Fight: Stand on the Balance Board and lean left or right to emerge from cover. Point a Wii Remote at opposing Miis who are doing the same. With the press of a button, toss snowballs at them.
Obstacle Course: Run in place on the Balance Board or pretend-jump (keep those feet on the board) to make the Mii leap. I didn't get far before getting knocked off the floating obstacle course by swinging wrecking balls.
Segway Circuit: Hold a Wii remote horizontally while standing on the Balance Board to simulate using a Segway. Then drive over a beach taken from Wii Sports Resort to collect balloons and chase moles.
Tilt City: Balls roll in from a ramp on the top right corner of the screen and descend to one of three chutes at the bottom of the screen. Three flippers that the player controls determine their path. The top flipper is a big Wii Remote. The bottom two flippers, aligned in a row, are Balance Boards. The three chutes are below, each color-coded for the balls of the appropriate hue. The trick is to tilt the proper flippers to guide the balls the right way. The better you do, the faster this all happens.
Birdseye Bullseye: Stand on the Balance Board and flap your arms frantically to make a chicken fly. Lean forward to make him fly toward platforms dotting the sea. Land on them for points and to add time extensions.
There were more, but those are what I tried. None seemed deep, but all were intuitive and easy. They didn't have the immediate appeal of Wii Fit's ski-jump nor the innate do-it-again challenge of the first game's slalom. But they played well enough to provide a nice dessert to an evening of Nintendo gaming. No main course, but a fine extra.
And while, yes, this reporter has in the tradition of either Woodward or Bernstein, donned a giant Pong paddle on his head to play a game of sonic Pong, done forward rolls on concrete at the behest of a lady dressed as Lara Croft and been strapped to a ceiling while dressed as Super Mario …. I still want that video of me flapping my arms playing Birdseye Bullseye. Not that I would destroy it or anything.


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- Languages ??spoken : English
- Original title : Kick-Ass 2
- Youtube Id : -youtube_id-
- Status : Released
- Tagline : You Can't Fight Your Destiny.
- Release Date of film : 2013-08-16
- Movie Genre : Action, Adventure, Crime,
- Societies of production : Marv Films
- Vote Count : 667
- Average rate : 6.5
- Film Note : -movie_rating-
- Duration of movie : 103
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson Character (Dave Lizewski / Kick-Ass)
- Chlo Grace Moretz Character (Mindy Macready / Hit-Girl)
- Christopher Mintz-Plasse Character (Chris D'Amico / The Motherfucker)
- Clark Duke Character (Marty Eisenberg / Battle Guy)
- Jim Carrey Character (Colonel Stars and Stripes)
- Lindy Booth Character (Night Bitch)
- Donald Faison Character (Doctor Gravity)
- Steven Mackintosh Character (Tommy's Dad)
- Monica Dolan Character (Tommy's Mum)
- Morris Chestnut Character (Detective Marcus Williams)
- Claudia Lee Character (Brooke)
- Amy Anzel Character (Mrs. Zane)
- Augustus Prew Character (Todd/Ass Kicker)
- Mary Kitchen Character (News Reporter)
- Garrett M. Brown Character (Mr.Lizewski)
- Lyndsy Fonseca Character (Katie Deauxma)
- Yancy Butler Character (Angie D'Amico)
- John Leguizamo Character (Javier)
- Robert Emms Character (Insect Man)
- Ella Purnell Character (Dolce)
Kick-Ass 2 Synopsis:
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I have blogged on WordPress for 6 years. I never thought to share what I do and why I came here to WP, so I will. I've always been an artist, since the age of 6. I remember seeing a drawing this kid made of a bird, I said to myself, "I want to learn to draw like that." So I did. I believe that is when my love of art started. I was blessed to have some amazing art teachers that saw my desire to express my inner heart, outward. I loved football season because I spent all week drawing and painting the big run-throughs our football team busted through on Friday nights. I also painted Christmas murals on store windows…I need to get back to that one day.
Then, came the digital age, and how could to transfer my art to the computer? It wasn't easy for me, because I love to draw with a pencil and sharpies…go figure! I taught myself how to draw with a mouse, and also became proficient in all the leading industry software. My professional job title in life have always found me expressing another side of my art through graphic design, illustration, writing, and editing. Wordpress is where I came to hone my skills. All the art you see on my blog and photos are created by me. I have so much, it would be hard to see it all. I've learned there are so many really awesomely, gifted people here, and I'm blessed to call many of you friend. Thank you, thank you for being here and for allowing me the opportunity to get to know you better.


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16°F this morning. This is NOT your average mid-November morning. In fact, Ed's Forecast of an 18°F low led me to scramble to my Cold Weather Gear log. "What in the blue blazes was I wearing last time it was below 20?!" I couldn't recall. I've been pretty comfortable lately, having found a good clothing combination for the high-30s and 40s we'd been experiencing.
There are 27 work days left this year, and I've got a little more than 450 miles to go to reach my goal. I've been plugging numbers into this equation I came up with to track how many full commutes I'll need to do:
(($RoundTripsLeft * (- $BusStopMiles)) + $MilesToGoal) / ( $FullTripMiles - $BusStopMiles)
In my case:
53 round trips are left this year
2.5 miles to the bus stop
14.5 miles all the way to work
456 miles to goal
I'll spare you the math. I have to ride the full trip 27 more times this year. The way this function works, I can also deduce that for every 12 miles of recreation or errand miles I ride, I "earn" one bus commute worth of breathing room.
While I did feel like a bit of a bad-ass this morning as I cut through the crisp air and rode past rimy fixtures and parked cars on Merriam Drive, I'll save my swagger (or is it hubris?) for the day I finally hit 5,000 miles for 2008... assuming that day comes. I've got my eyes on the prize.
Oh, and I really, really should have used the "Bag Corners" trick (that I learned from reading Warren's blog) this morning. I doubled up on socks and it wasn't quite enough.
Friday, November 21, 2008
A taste of winter
16°F this morning. This is NOT your average mid-November morning. In fact, Ed's Forecast of an 18°F low led me to scramble to my Cold Weather Gear log. "What in the blue blazes was I wearing last time it was below 20?!" I couldn't recall. I've been pretty comfortable lately, having found a good clothing combination for the high-30s and 40s we'd been experiencing.
6 comments:
Something's amiss. It was in the mid-30's here in Austin this morning. I know, I can hear all of the violins playing songs of pity for me. I grew up in Florida and have been here over 10 years and I just don't do cold which I define as anything below 80. :-)
- November 21, 2008 12:54 PM
- Jason said...
Glad I wasn't the only one having issues with the cold toes!
- November 21, 2008 3:46 PM
- Jeremy said...
I dug out my neoprene booties which has saved my toes as the temperature dropped to 20 in Boston this week. Unfortunately, it's back to where my real problem ends up being my fingers -- anyone found any magic gloves? :)
- November 21, 2008 5:17 PM
- MRMacrum said...
13'F here this morning. Yep, not our typical mid-Novrmbrt weather either. Feels like Jan. Did a Single Speed ride in the Nature Preserve across the road this A.M. 2 laps(2&1/2 miles or so total) was all I could handle as I didn't have my winter riding boots on. I sympathiize over the cold toes.
- November 21, 2008 6:10 PM
- Sirrus Rider said...
It was 46 Degrees during my usual cycling commute time here in Houston. Needless to say it's well below the comfort range of any of my cycling gear. Last year I had already hung it up for commuting for the season by now opting instead to road bike in the park.
I haven't ridden in two weeks since the lows started to drop into low 50s mid 40's and also in part due to a family tragedy. I just need one 15 miler to break last years record. (I'll get it just in time if I can milk one more work commute or a couple grocery store runs.) I'm also planning to augment my gear to tolerate this deeper dip in temperature.
Whomever was claiming the Earth is warming due greenhouse gasses needs to have their clothes stolen and forced to ride cross town in this mid 40's weather! Global Warming my A$$! All these paid off Environmental Scientists need to kiss me where I got CHOCOLATE!
- November 22, 2008 2:29 AM
I can't believe you rode this morning. Keep your motivation up, you can do it. I'm off to Bangkok today, I will be wishing for some of this cold weather soon.
My cold weather gloves are for cold storage workers, the brand name is ironclad summit, at iclad.com.
- November 22, 2008 7:12 AM
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Jennifer Warnes Albums
- The Well (2001)
- The Hunter (1992)
- Famous Blue Raincoat (1987)
- Best of Jennifer Warnes (1982)
- Shot Through the Heart (1979)
- Jennifer Warnes (1976)
- Jennifer (1972)
Jennifer Warnes Lyrics
Jennifer Warnes's Photo
Jennifer Warnes Biography
Jennifer Warnes has succeeded in a number of nearly unrelated areas of popular music -- as a contemporary pop singer, as a country singer, as a singer of movie themes, and as an interpreter of the work of Leonard Cohen. She first came to public notice when she became a regular on the television show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967, under the name Jennifer Warren or simply Jennifer. In 1968, she was part of the original cast of the Los Angeles production of the musical Hair, and she signed to the Parrot Records subsidiary of London Records, which released her debut album, ...I Can Remember Everything. Her second album, See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me!, appeared in 1969. Neither album was a commercial success, and she moved on to the Reprise division of Warner Bros. Records, which released Jennifer, produced by John Cale, in 1972. When that album also flopped, Warnes signed on as a backup singer with Leonard Cohen. She joined Arista Records in 1976 and finally registered in the charts in 1977 with "Right Time of the Night," a Top Ten pop hit that reached number one in the Easy Listening charts and also made the Top 40 in the Country charts. It was drawn from her Arista debut album, Jennifer Warnes. The follow-up, Shot Through the Heart (1979), featured "I Know a Heartache When I See One," a Top Ten Country and Top 40 Pop and Easy Listening hit. Warnes' next album was an Arista hits compilation, Best of Jennifer Warnes (1982). In July 1982, Island Records released "Up Where We Belong," the love theme from the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, a duet between Warnes and Joe Cocker. She had sung movie themes before, but never with such success: "Up Where We Belong" hit number one and went platinum. Not surprisingly, moviemakers sought ber out, and in 1983 she had chart entries with "Nights Are Forever" (from Twilight Zone -- The Movie) and the title theme from All the Right Moves, a duet with Chris Thompson In 1986, she became the first signee to the short-lived Cypress Records label, which released her acclaimed Famous Blue Raincoat, an album of Leonard Cohen songs, at the start of 1987. In July of that year, RCA Records released "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," the love theme from the film Dirty Dancing, a duet between Warnes and Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers. It topped the charts and went gold. Warnes spent five years crafting a follow-up to Famous Blue Raincoat, releasing The Hunter, which featured songs by various writers, herself included, in 1992. Note that Warnes' many label affiliations preclude any compilation from adequately covering her career and that, amazingly enough, neither of her biggest hits is available on a Jennifer Warnes album. In 2001, Warnes decided that she had enough feuding with labels and her fans were rewarded with her first solo album in nine years. The Well, which was released in 2001, was privately funded and Warnes retained control of the masters, ensuring that she would control the destiny of the album and its songs far into the future. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide


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Researcher studies fuel flow patterns for next-generation reactors
Posted by Mindy Limback
At Missouri University of Science and Technology, where the state's first nuclear reactor was constructed more than 50 years ago, researchers are tracking and measuring the movement of radioisotopes to develop sophisticated new standards for the next generation of reactors.
Led by Dr. Muthanna Al-Dahhan, chair and professor of chemical and biochemical engineering and professor of nuclear engineering, Missouri S&T is developing new approaches to understanding how nuclear fuel pebbles would behave in what are called "fourth generation" pebble-bed nuclear reactors. These reactors would house uranium fuel in spheres the size of tennis balls (the "pebbles") rather than rods, and the cores would cooled by helium gas instead of water. These reactors also are considered to be more efficient than water-cooled reactors and would operate at much higher temperatures.
Al-Dahhan is combining a broad array of approaches to measurement, but they fall into two categories:
- Techniques related to measuring and tracking nuclear fuel pebbles and imaging the reactor structure via radioisotopes. A radioisotope is the atom of a chemical that has an unstable nucleus and emits radiation as it decays.
- Techniques that measure other physical properties, such as movement, heat transfer and gas dispersion.
"These techniques can show us what is going on inside the reactor and can be used to eliminate a lot of experimental work," says Al-Dahhan. "All of this is related to the design, operation, risk assessment and analysis of future pebble-bed reactors."
Augmenting these techniques with sophisticated mathematical algorithms, Al-Dahhan creates computer-simulated visualizations that could help engineers plan future nuclear reactors.
Using what he calls "gamma ray chromatography," Al-Dahhan is able to view what is going on inside a reactor core, in much the same way that a physician uses ultrasound equipment to view movement within the human body.
"We can visualize the reactor core and the dynamics of how the nuclear fuel particles behave," Al-Dahhan says. From that data – and via computational fluid dynamics – Al-Dahhan can create models that predict how nuclear fuel pebbles would behave in a pebble-bed nuclear reactor, and how the helium would disperse heat through the process.
Using these measurement techniques could help the nuclear industry set benchmarks for determining how to build fourth-generation reactors, Al-Dahhan says. He adds that the techniques could also be used to set benchmarks for other energy-related projects, such as the design of coal gasification plants, bioenergy processes or more conventional nuclear plants.
In September 2012, Al-Dahhan presented his research at a conference in Cargese, Corsica, France, sponsored by Polytechnique Montreal, French nuclear research institutes, and several European universities and agencies. His presentation was titled "Benchmarking Multiphase CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) Results via Sophisticated Experimental Measurement Techniques and Methodologies."
While China and South Africa have started building small versions of pebble-bed reactors, the United States has yet to move forward with constructing such plants. In Missouri, Westinghouse Electric Co. announced last October that it would work with Missouri S&T, the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Missouri System to explore the feasibility of developing small modular nuclear reactors in the state. The effort also involves Ameren Missouri, which operates Missouri's only nuclear power plant, the Callaway Energy Center.
In addition to leading the chemical and biochemical engineering department, Al-Dahhan is a member of Missouri S&T's nuclear engineering faculty. The nuclear engineering department also manages S&T's reactor, which was the first built in Missouri, constructed in 1961. The University of Missouri-Columbia also has a nuclear reactor.
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text:
Bradley Benedetti, Demiurge in the Cupboard, Circusology of Native Leadership Piece 1, 2012
Orca Tears Turquoise( Wish'd We'd Ha'd)
"How can I retry when I was a watermarked birth? I was a global write, universally speaking. My only choice is to image search. rch, sea. Can you smell the past? It is yours. Commercial help gonna fix this Etc.?"
"Nostalgic For captivity…Scent of an orca's tears. Anti-virus wishing wells
If you haven't had your first familiar encounter
please refer to the catalog.
now that I've slowed down your 3 dimensional momentarium
I can let you in on something."
"Toyota arctic
sea u kiosk museum efficiency baby
if you take your TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME . I'll wait for
breeze and ufo- take your time
we were supposed to grow old together"
Trademark Applesdottir
Sanrio Erikkson
Nintendo Cloud
Ancient Purell
Sarcophagus St.Chateau
Libra von Katzengiest
Pegasus Bromwell
Oreo Mitsubishi
Astrology DeCordova
"I just, I just, I just toed this rope, you know , I just tied this
rope three times, well 6 really because I said it and then did it, but I
mean I tied it while saying it, well hahah you know what I mean,
anyway, the point is it WORKED
This dimension is feeling stuffy
I'm tired of living moment to moment, GET ME OUT OF HERE
I feel really 3 dimensional, I'm looking for something more, I felt
nervous not knowing what came next
In the 4th dimension I get to see it all, people from the past, the
future, really its the continuous present ever flowing around me and
you into one big ball of energy.
5th dimensional living felt too complex, the text was fifth dimensional
5 feels really dark velvety, red, very red ...


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Didn't have the chance to join us for SearchLove Boston 2012?
Too enamored with our charming and brilliant speakers to remember to write anything down?
Fret not, I spent day one of SearchLove Boston 2012 feverishly taking notes, wearing my fingers down to the bone and grinning appreciatively all the while. Just for you. This post recaps the first day of brilliant presentations.
Quick Jump Menu:
- Introduction - Duncan Morris
- Breaking News Panel - Ian Lurie, Will Critchlow, Annie Cushing and Rob Ousbey
- Dan Shapiro - "Creating Serendipity"
- Rob Ousbey – "Characteristics of a Successful Outreach Campaign"
- Ian Lurie – "Making your Pitch: Writing Clear, Compelling Proposals"
- Jen Lopez – "Utilizing Social Media for Customer Acquisition & Retention"
- Wil Reynolds – "Chasing Algorithms – Think Deviously, Act Angelical, and Never Get Hit by a Penalty"
- Mike Pantoliano - "CRO & SEO – Better Together"
- Annie Cushing – "Establishing a Framework for SEO Audits"
- Stephen Pavlovich – "How to get Attention, Links and Sales for a Scrappy Start-Up"
- Eytan Seidman – "Content Strategies that Work"
Intro from Duncan Morris back to topDuncan, Distilled Founder and CEO, kicked the conference off famously with his unique brand of deadpan snark and a recap of the history of Google's algorithm updates. Recently Panda/Penguin. MayDay before that. Florida even earlier. And so on.
And in the scramble to adjust strategies and tactics in response to these updates, what Danny Sullivan calls the Google Dance, Duncan holds up a quote from Ian Lurie (who's speaking today):
Not one change in the last ten years has affected the way web marketing really works.Duncan points out that while search volume for "Content Marketing" has spiked in the last year, it's still nowhere near the volume of "SEO" - and we need to keep perspective about that.
Mobile is exploding and multi-device consumption is the new landscape for web marketing. Almost half of the traffic to online Olympics coverage (41%) was from a mobile device. Video on mobile is perhaps the biggest part of this.
With that, Duncan introduces our first session - the Breaking News Panel:
Breaking News Panel - Ian Lurie, Will Critchlow, Annie Cushing and Rob Ousbey back to top
Q from Duncan: Who thinks the disavow tool is a good thing?
Ian Lurie does. Harder to game than you think. His biggest concern with Penguin was that he's seen several businesses that acquired businesses or had someone doing shoddy linkspam on their behalf, and the control was too much in the hands of spammers. He thinks the disavow tool puts power back in the hands of legitimate businesses.
Will/Duncan say there was an attempt of negative SEO on Distilled.net, and they have no intention to use the disavow tool as there was no negative impact. Will considers it an "input" - i.e., not a control mechanism, more of a "suggestion" tool and, perhaps more importantly, a data source for Google.
Ian: This is a tool of last resort.
Rob: Shouldn't Google just figure it out for themselves, which links are 'bad' and remove that value.
Ian: Sure, they should. Ian thinks it's perhaps the best solution out there.
Annie: Google has some complicity in the value of spammy links, because they worked. When the competition is doing it, and it's working, in order to compete businesses have little choice.
Annie advocated for the disavow tool after seeing clients "put it all out there" in reinclusion requests in good faith with zero response or redemption from Google.
Will: The name is interesting ("Cuttsian") - "how many people use the word 'disavow' in daily conversation?" It's a data play - the tool is not just going to help businesses, it's going to help Google.
Ian: I don't mind that so much. I'm a classic white hat and have nothing to worry about in terms of "bad" links. I don't build them.
Panel agrees, on a question from the audience, that proactively disavowing links isn't recommendable. (Perhaps unless they're really, really bad links.)
Annie: Heavy use of the disavow tool could put up a flag for Google - it puts you on the radar as an SEO.
Duncan: Wil Reynolds posted on SEOmoz about this - how Google allowing bad links to work makes white hat SEOs look like fools.
Annie: Penguin is making it easier to pitch creative, interesting marketing to clients.
Rob: Spam is still rampant, though.
Will: It's made smart black hat more effective and removed some of the less clever black hat competitors.
Ian: A lot of my job as an Internet Marketer is risk management. He doesn't mind being able to say "told you so" when it comes to linkspam.
Will: I believe Google would have rolled out Penguin even if it made the results worse - as a PR play. They were taking a beating in the tech press about linkspam. They had to respond. There is actually a high correlation between quality and paid links, because big, legitimate businesses could afford to buy links - and the incentive was there. Their competitors were doing it. Google created the link economy by allowing it to work.
Question from audience: "How much have these algo updates impacted Google's international properties (not just US and UK)?"
Will: Western/European markets seems to be the focus. One of the reasons Penguin impacted US so much was that there was a bigger search market in the US. There isn't enough of a market in Finland, for example, for a content farm to make money. So either the paid links signal was less significant and the algo update created less flux, or Google didn't bother with those properties where the problem was less rampant. Google's webspam team is also English-speaking in general, and tackling webspam in other languages may be a challenge for them.
Question from Duncan: "In two years, are we going to see Facebook/Yahoo showing up as sources of organic search referrals?"
Ian: Facebook? No way. They suck at search. Yahoo is unlikely as well. But Siri (Apple) is a search engine, he's expecting that to play a part (and Siri-like services from companies other than Apple).
Will: Google will move more in that space as well. Don't bet against them.
Ian: It'll be a simplicity play. Google won on simplicity when they emerged. Nobody's got this right yet for Mobile.
That concludes the Breaking News Panel. Great stuff from the panel. Up next, our first presenter, Dan Shapiro, who's going to tell a few stories from his startup career around creating serendipity for your business.
Dan Shapiro - "Creating Serendipity" back to top
Dan has worked for big companies and tiny companies. He's learned some interesting things and seen some trends.
At a big company, you think about strategy. You work on strategy and then on execution.
At small companies you have to get lucky. And you can manufacture serendipity.
Dan used to shirk it, or simply "wait for it to happen" - then he learned to go after it.
At his photo software startup, when they went to conferences, he and his co-founder would "end up" in the coffee line behind someone who worked for a company they could partner with.
But the people they really needed, investors, were hard to find.
In 2006, two years before the mortgage crisis, large investment banking companies threw the best parties connecting startups and investors. Lehman Brothers had a big one in particular. To pave the way for successful IPOs, Lehman invited investors and promising startups. Dan's startup wasn't one of them.
So they crashed the party. They went to Barcelona, where it was being held, and walked right in.
An investor from Seattle (their hometown), was there. Dan "sauntered up," pretended to have no ulterior intentions, and ended up striking up a deal - Tom (the investor) joined Ontela (Dan's startup).
Dan's 2nd startup: Sparkbuy (comparison shopping for consumer electronics - an affiliate model).
Dan has a rule: if he gets a first class upgrade, or is traveling to/from the valley, he forces himself (doesn't enjoy it) to talk on an airplane.
He met Matt, from Google, on such a traveling occasion.
Dan told Matt about sparkbuy (just an idea at the time), and Matt asked him to email him if the idea moved forward. A little back and forth via email, then quiet for months.
Dan and his team at Sparkbuy soft-launched (beta) on TechCrunch. Matt emailed Dan with congrats and mentioned he was in the market for an ASUS laptop. Dan followed up with some funny bits (usability studies show 30% of Americans pronounce ASUS "asses"). Matt suggested lunch.
Long story short: Google acquired Dan's company.
Now Bill believes in luck, and that you can create it. He has three principles around luck:
- Fish in deep water It's impossible to predict what's going to move your business forward, but you can often predict where and when they might (conferences like SearchLove, for example)
- Triage quickly When in business mode, gracefully/simply move on when a conversation is unlikely to pan out into any opportunities. Hard to do this (Dan doesn't like to be judgmental), but it's important to use time efficiently.
- Learn the one, magic phrase - "How can I help?" Note: this isn't a commitment to help (it may not be plausible), but creating serendipity for other people has a funny way of coming back around
Q and AQ from Rand Fishkin: "What can you share about the sparkbuy acquisition?"
A: "Not much. But he's working on new products inside Google (cars and credit cards) that are based on the basic Sparkbuy model of comparison shopping.
Q from Will Critchlow: "What kind of serendipity are you trying to create now?"
Dan: "Inside a big company like Google, it's no longer necessary." He has access to resources and brilliant people. He can focus on building products and experiences he loves.
Q from audience: "Where is all of this [Google] shopping stuff going, in five years?"
Dan: I can't speak to the overall plan, but I'm passionate about providing a fantastic experience to users. I'm focused on a small set of queries in that pursuit. "I'm not worried about corporate strategy or promotions - I'm worried about how I can build a brilliant experience for people who use our services every day."
Q from Duncan Morris: "Does success come from serendipity or being 'good?'"
Dan: Serendipity plays a huge role, but you can help it along. You can manufacture it. Some people stumble into it (see reality TV stars), but most people leverage it, whether they realize it or not, as something we can influence. "You have to keep your ears open for opportunity."
Great stuff from Dan. Onto our next presenter, Distilled's own COO, Rob Ousbey, who's going to educate us on the characteristics of a successful outreach campaign.
Rob Ousbey – "Characteristics of a Successful Outreach Campaign" back to topRob's presentation slides are available on SlideShare.
Rob's going to talk uncharacteristically fast (thanks Rob!).
The conversion funnel for outreach:
- Prospecting
- Contacting Communicating
- Conversion
- Build Relationships
- Get Coverage
- Acquire Links
Rob wants to share the characteristics that Distilled has seen as highly correlative to successful outreach.
1) Get Buy InGet buy in from your client's internal stakeholders (or your bosses and their bosses if you're in-house).
Rob wanted to get photos from a client of their data center, but it was incredibly difficult. Rob wondered why they couldn't provide pictures, and the reason was because they had no buy in -
Flywheel of Personal Credibility. Keep pushing. You get results, you get more buy-in, get more access, better results, they like you more, so on.
Maybe even "hack" the flywheel, get some initial impacts (quick wins) however you have to, leverage that to get buy in for the work you really want to do, the big stuff.
2) BudgetContent Marketing is risky. Risk-averse people like PPC because you can scale up when something works. With big content pieces and outreach efforts, too small a budget can neuter the results. The risk of a big budget might be the only way to give it a chance for success.
Flywheel of Brand Credibility. As you publish/promote good content, you get credibility, an audience who amplifies outreach.
You can hack this one as well - use your website to demo credibility. Measure it and optimize it.
3) Access to Influential PeopleThe notable people in your client's companies, or your own, can carry more clout. Their Guest Posting efforts can be much more successful. (See Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff, who guest posts to much success.)
4) Avoid "PageRank Magpies"Silence the people who are ultra-focused on quantitative metrics (like PageRank). These are not telling to good brand and long-term value (and lateral benefits) to outreach.
5) Understanding of the Good BrandHelp your outreach team learn more about the brand and consumers. Find the target market, find the positive spins for the brand's service/product.
Outreach is, essentially, online PR. Consider the real audience for the brand, connect there.
6) GatekeepersUnderstand the motivations of the bloggers/publishers in the niche and how you can align the brand with those motivations.
7) "Good Niche"
- This audience needs to like the brand (or have values aligned with it)
- A niche that might respond well to sampling the service/product
- A good niche has good network effects (bloggers who know and like each other)
8) ProductAccess to the product can be key in outreach - distributing it for free for reviews, for example. Distilled had a jewelry client. They identified bloggers who were a good fit for the jewelry and distributed it with a note.
Look for cake mix / add your own egg. Set things up so that the person feels they've done "just enough work" to feel accomplishment/ownership. Instead of just asking them to link, ask them to write a review, for example. Takes the transactional/awkward nature of the interaction away.
9) Great ContentAdvertorial content usually fails.
Distilled had a client who created a self-promotional infographic. Failed miserably.
Competitive Aspect - leverage the natural competitive nature of tribes (vs other tribes) to get them interested in content.
"Apple users are more generous when giving to charity" (Razoo.com infographic) - generated a lot of coverage b/c it was controversial/competitive.
10) Why NowHave a good answer to the question, "why I'm contacting you now." "Because I was hired to do outreach" is never the right answer. Think:
- new range
- news worthy
- special event
- seasonality
Be prepared to reformat the creative Distilled switched monetary values in an infographic from dollars to pounds for a placement, "greased the wheels" for that placement.
Turning static infographics into video/interactive can work well.
11) StrategyDon't just create content. Create a strategy first. For a Distilled client who provides insurance for small businesses, Distilled created the following strategy:
- Expert content that positions them as teh most knowledgeable in the business insurance niche.
- Evergreen content for the small business that's getting online.
- Timely content for the business owner who needs up-to-date information.
12) Plan & Calendar
Set a campaign plan over the year, around seasonal/special events, and around resources. Set launch dates. Q4 for example, is a tough time for outreach (Dec is totally quiet).
13) Pre-outreachBegin kindling relationships, or even getting feedback for content ideas, with placements/bloggers. Makes the promotional aspect later much more successful.
This can also help you get a sense of whether there's actual interest in the content. If there isn't you can adjust or scrap the strategy (and save yourself and your client resources/heartache).
Micro Conversions Getting some initial feedback or a "yeah that sounds interesting" makes it more likely someone will follow-through later with a link. Get a small "yes" first, the big one later.
14) Little Black BookTreat people like people. Keep in touch. Do things when you don't need something from them. It'll pay back. Conversion to Contact Use Facebook demographic targeting to advertise to bloggers (Rob tried this with fashion bloggers). Low CTR, Poor conversion rate, campaign moved slowly. Spent $70 - got two useful contacts out of it. Conversion to Links Carson Ward writes a philosophy blog. Spent some money on ads (AdWords, StumbleUpon, Reddit). $180. 15k visits. 192 linking domains (154 were followed). 154 new relationships.
Q and AQ: How can we help visually report to clients on the results of our outreach efforts? A: Recommends not getting too focused on ROI b/c there is a chasm between the outreach effort and the measurable outputs we're looking at in analytics. A lot of the value is missed. Better to show relationships built, direct traffic/links built, and then show the SEO metrics on the other end (since outreach is generally done with SEO in mind, if not as the central goal). Q: How can we scale outreach efforts? A: Doesn't scale easily. But building up the little black book helps (contacts are everything in PR, after all, and outreach is essentially online PR). More people adding relationships to the bank creates of a flywheel of its own (everyone on the team has more opportunity). Q: Outreach on behalf of client, or agency? A: On behalf of client. Used to pose as in-house, not anymore. Totally transparent. Main reason is scale. They get to use that relationships again for other clients.
That's all from Rob - go forth and leverage this new outreach knowledge! We're breaking for refreshments, then back with Ian Lurie, who's going to take us to school on creating better proposals.
Ian Lurie – "Making your Pitch: Writing Clear, Compelling Proposals" back to top
Ian was kind enough to compile his slides and resources on the Portent Interctive site here: portent.co/ian-proposals (thanks Ian!).
Kids: Nature's way of teaching us our parents were right. Because they ask, "Why?" Kids are also nature's way of teaching us to write proposals. "Because I said so" doesn't work. "Because I f**king said so" also doesn't work.
The instinct with proposals is to write down everything you do. That massive description is basically a "because I said so" because it isn't designed to be read. It's designed for the reader to give up and say, "OK I get it, it's complicated and you do it all."
Most proposals answer What and How.
You must answer Why.
Read Simon Sinek's Start With Why (here's Simon's TED talk on the topic).
"Why do I get up in the morning and go to work." - You need to be able to answer this or you end up with crap mission statements.
"To make money" is a crappy Why. "To help all people live healthy lives" is awesome.
1. Getting the Why"We are in business because we believe that _________"
Ian like to structure it this way: "if you _____________, then we're your agency."
Outcomes are the What not the Why. Money/ROI/Profit/Revenue - all Whats.
Whys don't apply to everyone.
"We are a full-service digital agency providing PPC, SEO, Analytics..." - Ian used to do this
"We are in business because we believe that great marketing can save the world" - this is what he does now.
"If you think what you do matters, and want to work with folks who know that means it all matters, then we're your agency." WHY = VALUE
2. Imputed ValueThe sum total of the details around an experience are what give the customer reinforcement of value. HOW||WHY (parallel). This is where the little details come in. It all matters, it all reinforces the Why.
Tools Ian uses:
- Powerpoint/Keynote for all proposals (don't use MSFT Word)
- Picks a few great fonts (Ian buys them - they're worth it)
- iStockPhoto for animal photos (Ian is known for his animal photos)
- Skitch for markup
- Excel
- Look at how they promote themselves
- Look at who works there (LinkedIn) - seem like people you'd like to work with every day? It's important.
Have a personality. Don't be afraid to be quirky in your proposals. When clients say "we felt you really got it" when they hire you, that's personality. Don't be afraid to use words like "suckage."
Get to the point. Avoid words like "majority of" or "clearly" or "in order to" etc - use "most" or "to." Use active voice. Read Writing with Style by John Trimble.
Illustrate. Mack Web does a good job of illustrating process. Visualize dry/boring process discussions, it gives people a break.
Don't assault the client. Break it up. Don't try to overwhelm them with bulk. Use whitespace.
Avoid stock photo abuse. No snails having sex (Ian I'm surprised at you). Generic crap is obvious. The most attractive/diverse group of people I've ever seen? Right. Be genuine.
Use data sparingly (and well). A ton of data is a "because I said so." It fails. Make it really clear. Use spare data points that get right at the why in an obvious, direct manner. Line spacing / formatting. Break things up. Use bullets and lists.
Be consistent. Please. Keep formatting between slides/pages consistent so the user's reading/viewing experience is fluid and not jarring.
Use PDFs. The person reading it will have different fonts, or read it on a cell phone, or be running a new tablet. People will find a way to ruin the format. PDFs lock it in.
3. The Wrap UpKnow the Why. Otherwise you're phoning it in. It's uninspiring and clients will be uninspired to hire you.
Build imputed value. Care - a lot. All the little details matter. Pay attention.
WHY||HOW. Make sure there are parallels. This is about more than just proposals, it's about marketing overall.
(Special thanks to Ian for speaking slowly and clearly and saving my fingers for the last 40 minutes.)
Q and AQ: This is great for new prospects - what about getting buy in from existing clients for different efforts? A: I do it every day. It can be difficult, but keep at it. Communicating with clients around their own Why will get through to eventually.
Q: Do you integrate competitive analysis at all with your proposals? A: Depends. We'll talk about opportunity gap, but again I always tie it back to the client's Why. You don't close a competitive gap by undercutting on price, developing a slight advantage tactically. Tie it back to "here's why you're different and here's how you make the competition irrelevant."
Q: What happens when you go down a road (with a Why at the core of the strategy) you thought was good, but it ends up not working well with the client? How do you address the tension? A: I'm not the only person at Portent, but I'm not in it for the money. If it's not working you need to deal with it. I've had discussion with clients about the grief/tension in the relationship and getting at what can be done. Communicate - silence from the client does not mean things are going well.
Q: How do you narrow down / cherry pick what should go in vs what should be left out of a proposal? A: Character as a company has to be there (it's the Why). Also talk about what they're going to get (what will be the outcomes) - this isn't the centerpiece, but it's got to be in there. Focus on opportunity gap. Thirdly, the How - processes (visualized), how things will progress, etc.
Q: How about RFPs with specific format - how do we insert the Why? A: When you get an RFP you know you're not talking to the right person, it's someone down the chain. Little chance to differentiate. RFPs suck. They kill the Why Look for opportunities to attach additional documents - it's a chance to differentiate and deal with the Why.
Seriously useful tips from Ian (as always). Up next is Jen Lopez, SEOmoz's Community Manager, who's going to show us how to leverage social media for customer acquisition and retention.
Jen Lopez – "Utilizing Social Media for Customer Acquisition & Retention" back to top
Grab Jen's presentation slides on SlideShare.
Why is the community girl talking about acquisition & retention?
We generally think of customer acquisition in terms of $$ - ads/SEO/content marketing.
When we think of social, we think of broadcast. "Tell all the people!!"
Jen wants to talk about a way to earn customers through social without spending a ton.
In-App SharingFollowerWonk (SEOmoz tool), when users sign up, enter their email, they can check a box and tweet about it (and they do - and it generates retweets and favorites).
Shareable URLsSimply Measured creates short, shareable links that Jen uses to tweet with - makes it easy for her to promote their reports. Note: the content has to kick ass.
Show some dataWhen users share your stuff, show them the results. Show them how many people clicked the links they shared. This gives them some incentive/motivation to keep sharing.
"Pay" with a Tweet/ShareOli Gardner, with The Noob Guide to Online Marketing, used a "pay with a tweet" mechanism to aid virality. Low-friction conversion for a high-value report. Results were through the roof.
Social ProofShow people what their friends are up to on your site. Jen logged in to TripAdvisor and saw David Mihm had reviewed a B&B in Ireland. Not only aids the products/listings, but helps reinforce the user's engagement and familiarity with your site.
Connect G+ to AdWordsBring social proof into your advertising. Improves clickthrough rates.
Facebook EdgeRankLeverage this. Jen doesn't like that Facebook makes us pay for people who already "like" our stuff to see more of our stuff, but it's their playground. Promote posts, but make sure they're valuable, not utterly self-promotional.
Uhm...Ask?Barack Obama DMed Jen. She clicked, then tweeted what they asked her to tweet. If you have enough clout, simply asking people to promote can create a "street team" effect - they'll help just to be associated with you (or feel associated with you).
CommunityUse the info you gather from users to make it easy. Tell people, for example, when people's birthdays are coming up. Minted does this (they allow you to create/send custom gift cards for friends).
Can people find you?If someone wants to reach out via social channels, how easy is it? (Seriously, go check if your companies Twitter/LinkedIn/Google+ profiles are clearly visible and linked to from your website.)
Take it OffineSend cupcakes (for example). Take it offline. They'll take it back online to thank you.
Customer ServiceUse social for it. It's quick. Be responsive.
Empower the ManagerMake people's lives easier. They will love you for it.
Test it allDon't just assume the "best time to tweet" tips out there, while measured and interesting, fit for your audience. Run your own experiments and find out for yourself. Yours will be different.
Q and AQ: I feel spammy posting the same article more than once per day. Advice? A: Go ahead and post multiple times, but make it unique. "In case you missed it earlier" helps.
Q: G+ for industries outside SEO? Use it? A: Definitely. Not as much viral potential, but when you mention someone by name (with + symbol), they're more likely to see it and respond.
Q: Use cases for LinkedIn? A: Many sites get the majority of their traffic from LinkedIn. It can be a very rich channel. SEOmoz spends more time on LinkedIn than Google+. There are a ton of people asking questions on LinkedIn about SEO, and it's a great place for us to do some outreach.
Big thanks to Jen for some seriously actionable tips on leveraging the social channel to attract and keep customers. Up next...lunch! Then we're back with the ever-ignited Wil Reynolds, who's going to scold us for chasing algorithms and show us a better way.
Wil Reynolds – "Chasing Algorithms – Think Deviously, Act Angelical, and Never Get Hit by a Penalty" back to top
Get Wil's presentation slides here.
Wil's glad we haven't been talking algos so far, because we shouldn't be.
Wil likes maximizing his time, not wasting it.
Algo view from a non-techieWil is not technical. He finds it's a good thing when working with clients (they don't care about the tech details).
Google has us outnumbered on the PhD/Tech thing. We're not going to outsmart them.
"Marketing = Formula?"
Persuasion (people) vs Manipulation (spiders). We've trended toward the latter, mistakenly. We became like mad scientists with zero social skills.
"Too Transparent" - Wil says there is no such thing. So he's opening his kimono:
- Wil cloaked (gasp). He was told it worked, so he did it.
- He did white text / white background. He thought he was helping (being angelic). Then he saw the kind of garbage the was ranking on those same tactics.
In 13 years of SEO, Wil was surprised one time by a site that was hit (a site he wasn't expecting to get hit). His own. SEERInteractive.com was banned in Google for 12 hours.
Wil's take on directories: Never saw them as a "bad" thing. The web can never be that simple. Nobody here has a PhD, but we all have an opinion on the algo.
Wil did 80% directory link building for a bit (2005), and it worked. He thought, "too easy." In 2007, he was moving to 50% directory link building, 50% other tactics. 2009, he did only 30% directories. About the same time Wil 301'd the old domain to the new SeerInteractive.com. Then they got hit.
Even with links from Google, Inc., Rackspace, Microsoft, CNN, CNBC, Basecamp, etc, they got hit.
"The interesting thing about building a real business is that at some point you no longer care about ranking for anything other than your brand name."
It was the links to ThinkSEER.com (their old domain) that got them penaized. They were heavy on the anchor text for "SEO company."
RCS won't save you. SEER was legit, got hit.
Let's walk through what happened:
- SEER had a client in a highly-competitive niche. Client was ranking well. They built a crappy microsite (didn't tell SEER), built links to the microsite with link networks. That didn't work so well, so the client linked to the crap microsite from their home site.
- Microsite got hit, client site got hit - then SEER, for linking out. (Mike's note: Really? This seems unlikely to me.)
- Wil was told ThinkSEER.com was toxic (by the "powers that be"). He didn't believe it.
- Time is limited and better spent elsewhere
- You never really know. You just don't. It's a black box.
4 Realities of Google Patents:
- They may never implement it
- If they do it could be 8 years from now
- If it doesn't work they'll yank it
- Surfacing Quality Content - this is what they're always trying to do. Every algorithmic change is aiming at this goal.
How many algo updates purposefully reward thin low quality content?
Quality content is how you protect yourself. It's a lot easier to get out of trouble (that's why SEER was back in 12 hours). A manual review by Google proved SEER was legitimate and deserved to be included in the index.
Wil noticed the 3rd largest referer to their "how X makes money" infographic was m.[siteyouknow].com. Responsive design FTW. Seer was able to provide custom-dimension versions of the infographic on the fly because it was designed to be responsive to the viewport.
Wil tweeted the infographic once. @avinash retweeted, then @theverge, then @gizmodo - and commence viral liftoff.
1 good piece of content. 1 tweet. All it took.
7700 links in 38 days. 500 LRDs.
The infographic has a life of its own. Wil checked Topsy recently, weeks after publishing/tweeting the piece - 5 people had tweeted about it in the last hour.
One good reason to follow algos: Protect yourself from affiliate/partner risks. Partners/affiliates are important, but they might engage in shady stuff - and get you hurt as a result.
Pro tip: Buy an affiliate's site when they're hurting, turn it around (with RCS).
Directories and articles can't kill a quality site. Reciprocal links same. If search overall would break if the tactic was penalized, it's not worth worrying about. Footer links for example - it's happening everywhere. So how can it be a quality filter for Google? Widgets are the same, as well as Infographics.
None of these tactics is "bad" by nature. The algorithms are simply not that simple.
Don't put authorship on non-authored pages. A sales landing page is not an article. "CEO as author" of the site home page?
Algos are becoming like a "swinging axe" - you might get through one pass, but the next time they might catch you. Iterative. Gets smarter every time.
Chase DISPLAY algo changes, not ranking. Think KnowledgeGraph. Universal results. Google scraping book/movie/etc info and giving the answer directly (cuts the business out). 7 results instead of 10. Etc.
Q and AQ: What do you think is going on with on-page, visual/CSS issues, now that Google is rendering the full page? A: The minute you're talking about "SEO content," or content that's there for SEO reasons, you've lost the fight. And think of a sub-nav, it's like a panel of hidden site-wide links. No way that's going to get someone penalized.
Thanks to Wil for his usual energetic and engaged approach to a compelling and important topic. Next up is Distilled's own Mike Pantoliano, who's going to highlight the importance of combining SEO and CRO for better results, happier clients and building a more complete skill set.
Mike Pantoliano - "CRO & SEO – Better Together" back to top
Get Mike's presentation slides right here.
Mike tries to be a complete marketer - not an SEO. A given SEO tactic has a shelf life, marketing does not.
In 2009 we weren't talking about inbound, RCS, etc. We were talking SEO.
Meet Mark - an in-house SEO in 2009. He was doing good, white hat SEO.
But the ROI Mark was getting was hitting a point of diminishing returns. Same effort, fewer and fewer results. The low hanging fruit were exhausted.
CRO is how Mark can get passed this.
Reason 1: Make your client more money. This is the obvious reason, but important. SEOmoz made $1 million extra hiring Conversion Rate Experts to do CRO for them. Rand later said this extra revenue allowed them to build Linkscape (now their flagship product).
Reason 2: We like to talk art & science in SEO. We do analysis, but we also brainstorm/create unique, interesting content. This is the same with CRO - there's science, but there is qualitative work involved.
Reason 3: (Not Provided) - there could be a point where our keyword reports (organic) are worthless. So let's focus on content reports. Where are people who come from Google organic landing? Where do they go from there?
Reason 4: Panda. Panda is an algorithmic attempt at understanding user behavior on your site. If we're doing CRO, we're looking at the user experience and improving it. Algo updates like Panda, as a result, will be less likely to negatively impact us.
Reason 5: All the traffic in the world from organic search means nothing if it doesn't convert.
Reason 6: By doing CRO and testing, we're developing an innate understanding of customer behavior. This makes us valuable. It's market research. SEO : Market Research : CRO.
See the Highrise (from 37signals) write-up on their headline updates (for CRO) on their home page.
Reason 7: You're watching your presentation. You can't claim ignorance anymore. But you need to test things yourself.
Stephen Pavlovich is a CRO expert, not because he reads blogs. Because he tests and has experience.
Read The Lean Startup. Eric Ries talks about the Build > Measure > Learn feedback loop. Most of our processes as SEOs misses that Learn piece.
See Stephen's presentation, "What a CRO Expert Bookmarks" (from SearchLove 2011, available for purchase in the Distilled store).
Make friends with designersSEOs don't have much of a design sense (overall). Bringing designers to bear on SEO and CRO efforts is valuable. Often there will be assets that weren't used, or were used in the past, based on some previous research/planning - and these can be brought to bear on new CRO efforts.
Ask the right questions
Gathering feedback (with tools like Qualaroo, 4Q, SurveyMonkey, Sales/Support teams etc) generates essential insights.Mockups/Wireframes are powerful
Balsamiq/Notable/Mockingbird are three great tools for this process - get feedback and, more importantly, buy-in for what you want to test/launch
Solidify allows you to create interactive flows of mockups - for checkout flow, etc. Great for multi-step conversion prototypes
Tools of the CRO Trade
Best Practices* (*Ya gotta test)Testimonials - careful not to use stock-looking photos
- Twitter testimonials are great (they're verifiable, you can click and see the Tweet)
- Align testimonials with personas - so potential customers can self-identify with one of them
- Simplicity
- Specificity
- Emphasize "you" not "we"
- Jonathon Colman - for every 1 second of load time, conversion drops 7%
- (Extra from Mike T: 37signals also reported that a half-second improvement on page load for the Basecamp home page yielded a 5% conversion boost)
- Users know stock photos when they see them. Even real "professional" photos with too much polish get ignored.
- See Jakob Neilsen on use of photos in web content (including some interesting details on user engagement with stock photos)
- Make users lives easier - if it's obviously an improvement, don't "test" just do it the first time
- Don't test "button colors" if there are big things that could drive bigger improvements
Why should SEOs do CRO?
- ROI (and happy clients)
- Career level up
- (not provided)
- Panda
- Traffic that doesn't convert doesn't much matter
- Customer behavior intuition
- Strive for validated learning
- Be authentic
- Simplicity
- "You" not "we"
- Be a human
- Be inspired, don't just copy
- Sweat the small stuff, test the big stuff
Q and AQ: We (audience member) do a lot of testing. We think we got conclusive results. Then we go back and test again, and the original result was wrong. Why? A: Will Critchlow is working on this now - you can be tricked by significance. Don't jump the gun. If it looks like an obvious win, let it ride. Run another test if you're unsure. It can be a tricky thing, even when your CRO software is telling you you've got statistical significance.
Don't know about you, but I'm going to up my game on CRO after this excellent talk from Mike. We're breaking for afternoon tea (how delightfully British), then we're back with Annie Cushing, who'll be dropping some serious knowledge on a framework for SEO audits.
Annie Cushing – "Establishing a Framework for SEO Audits" back to top
Annie has put together some great Google Doc resources for her presentation. Available, along with her presentation slides, right here.
Too much data isn't necessarily a good thing. Annie loves data, but every time she gets an audit project, she gets the sinking feeling of not knowing where to start.
She had a client who came to SEER for help, they took a big hit in Feb 2012. Wasn't links (profile was clean). Wasn't technical. A ton to look through. Without the checklist (she will share) she wouldn't have figured it out.
The most expensive mistakes we see regularly (in audits):
1. Subdomain reporting errors in GAAnnie recommends adding the "show hostname" filter for GA (so it'll show full URL, not just URI). Instructions are in Annie's audit doc.
Add an annotation when you do this. 1st day of the month preferred. Otherwise sorting out what happened will be confusing.
2. Index bloatWay more pages being crawled/indexed than are helping your business (using up crawl budget)
Causes of bloat:
- Borked internal linking
- Search results pages (internal)
- eCommerce parameters (sort variables)
Let's do some math 5.8 million pages indexed Only 37k receive organic traffic Only 645 drove revenue .6% of indexed pages got traffic .01% of indexed pages generated revenue
This is a huge chasm, not the 1:1 ratio you want.
3. PPC/Display traffic showing up as organicTake a careful look at organic landing pages - if PPC tracking tags are showing up in URLs, there's a problem. At a minimum, filter this from GA data. But addressing the root problem is better long-term.
4. Dirty sitemapsDuane Forrester said that after 1% of sitemap pages returning other than 200 status, Bing starts to lose trust. That's a bit girly of Bing, says Annie, but it's something to look at.
5. Sitemap hasn't been submittedThis is basic. If you aren't using a sitemap.xml file to help Google crawl the right pages on your site, you're missing SEO 101 stuff.
6. Loss of valuable links
- Home page that 302s essentially kills your inbound links
- Pages with links that 404
- Pages that 500
Annie's Google Doc
- Multiple tabs (for different areas/categories of factors) with a list of checkpoints in each.
- Many checkpoints include instructions (often with links out to more in-depth walkthroughs)
Thanks Annie! Next up we have CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich, who's breaking from his normal topic of CRO and talking about his startup, Wish.co.uk, and how he and his partner leverage some interesting, agile online PR techniques to drive massive traffic and sales.
Stephen Pavlovich – "How to get Attention, Links and Sales for a Scrappy Start-Up" back to top
Stephen normally speaks about CRO. Not today.
Stephen is talking about Wish.co.uk. He wants to walk through taking it from the idea inception to a $1 million business.
They're an experience company. They invented the Zombie Shopping Mall, which drove a ton of PR.
In the next 45 minutes Stephen will cover:
- How a scrappy start-up can get attention (without paying for it)
- How to multiply the impact of PR ( and keep costs down)
- How to get interviewed about threesomes on Columbia national radio (ha)
Intro: Why we set up Wish.co.ukOne of the first rules of CRO is to "become a customer" - engage the business as a customer would and learn from the experience.
They wanted to apply that same approach to their own company (Conversion Factory). Wish.co.uk was that experiment.
Punch above your weightTwo people running the business, but they wanted to look bigger. The domain name was the best opportunity for that. They spent $10k on Wish.co.uk, and Stephen says it was by far the best investment they made. It has influenced every single marketing/PR effort they've done.
"Even though the company never existed, people thought they'd heard of it before because of the name."
Ways to do this with PR/stories
- Topical - create stories based around news in the moment
- Sexual
- Controversial
- Celebrity
Creating Valentine's Day PR on the cheapThey created Romantic Break for Three - a product that drove PR in itself. It drove coverage/links/etc. Got on the radio (BBC/Columbia) and some US tv.
But they had to pull the plug. The "owner of the hotel" wasn't the owner of the hotel. He was the (soon to be ex) husband of the owner. Stephen: "it didn't work out well."
It was free, but it didn't generate any sales.
"Eighty percent of success is showing up." Woody Allen, favorite quote at Wish.
So they tried something else: can we get a tweet from @stephenfry (the British actor/comedian)
They created an (expensive) experience (it wasn't real) offering brunch with a British celebrity, and Stephen Fry tweeted it. They got 10k visits, but no sales.
Start with the end in mind"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"
Wish used this mantra (from Facebook) to arrive at their next strategy. With their Zombie Shopping Mall product (which they'd just created), they thought @simonpegg would be a perfect target for tweeting the product.
@simonpegg tweeted. WIsh.co.uk's servers went down. Several times.
They ran with it. They did a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" around the product (people were curious about health insurance, etc).
They leveraged Facebook sponsored posts.
The traffic went exponentially up and to the right. Stephen says the graph is embarrassing because it makes them look like they forgot to installed Google Analytics properly - when actually, they were getting steady traffic beforehand.
They then leveraged this initial seed coverage to drive more PR.
Revenue followed the traffic graph (way up, to the right).
Waves of coverage have occurredon their own since then. @jamieoliver participated and tweeted about it. The product's viral quality drove its own PR after the initial pitch.
They started doing zombie videos with a YouTube producer (the guy who created the World's Largest Rope Swing video).
They found the journalists who covered this guy's previous videos, then reached out about the new zombie video. They were able to generate more considerable coverage, traffic and sales this way.
- Domain name (optional)
- Server (must have for big traffic spikes)
- Social mechanisms (for sharing)
- Start with the goal, work backwards
- 1+ of topical, sex, controversy, celebrity
- Create a new product, create a fake product, spin an existing product
- Gather quotes, media and "proof"
- Who's the 'ideal" personal to seed it?
- As soon as you get seed credibility, repitch to other celebrities
- Follow-up with a press release (include images and quotes; write the article for them)
- Push on social media (advertise) and scale with services like BuzzStream
Q and AQ: Did you consider providing any incentives to celebrities to encourage their promotion? A: We tried it, but it didn't seem to work well. It seemed they were frequently pitched that way and were resistant to it.
Q: Did you do much CRO on the site throughout this process? A: Not much during those events - the type of traffic you get during those periods is tough to evaluate. Not likely to convert. We prefer to wait until after those periods to do testing.
Big thanks to Stephen for a great presentation (one of my favorites of the conference). Next up: Eytan Seidman, founder of Oyser.com, on content strategies that work.
Eytan Seidman – "Content Strategies that Work" back to top
Eytan founded Oyster.com after a travel experience in Alaska with two different accommodations - one good, the other...not so good.
The travel space is dominated by big players - Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotels.com, Expedia, Priceline.com, etc. Tough nut to crack. ~$50 billion of market capitalization. Just ultra-competitive.
Oyster goes to hotels in person, take extensive photos, document everything and post the review. Photos are sectioned into albums for user experience.
They categorize hotels around popular themes - "Best Party Hotels" "Best Luxury Hotels" etc.
Highly-visual product, rich content, adding hotels as quickly as they can.
The Challenges:
Massive Incumbent Marketing Spend (in the millions per year for most big competitors).Big players have massive marketing budgets - Oyster can't compete on budget.
Travel is highly episodicMost people only take 1-2 "big" trips a year, and users aren't necessarily looking for new solutions (they go to the brands they know).
So how did Oyster break into the market?
They started doing Content Marketing (before it was called "Content Marketing"). They learned fast that the content has got to be really, really (really) good. Honestly ask the question: Will someone take time out of their day to share this
Not only does this benefit via SEO signals, but it creates a positive brand experience (exactly what Oyster needed to start to be in customer's minds when they were booking travel).
They created content showing the reality of promotional hotel photographs - "Photo Fakeouts." They show what the experience actually looks like (not what the hotel wants you to think it's like).
They grab users when they're not thinking about traveling with interesting content pieces. This keeps their brand in mind when those people do end up looking for travel solutions.
Zillow has a similar strategy. People don't think much about real estate until the 1-2 times in their lives when they need to buy or sell a home. Zillow finds angles around the real estate topic (celebrity homes, trends, etc), to entertain users and create a positive brand experience.
Forbes created the Forbes 400 to achieve much of the same. An otherwise dry/specialist topic (finance) is transformed into something with broad appeal (everyone's intrigued to see who the richest people are).
One of the reasons Oyster's "Photo Fakeouts" work so well is that it's not easy for anyone else to copy. Oyster's business model results in their owning many hotel photos. That's a unique asset they can leverage that their competitors would have to invest heavily to copy. It's defensible.
Your content marketing should reinforce what is unique about youExamples:
- Oyster was picked up by Lifehacker Australia for their Bundle Breakdowns (showing the true costs of bundles and whether or not they're good deals)
- 10 Charts About Sex (OKCupid.com)
- HowAboutWe.com "The Date Report" - "8 Reasons It's Amazing Anyone Gets Together + 14 Sex Tips from a 1960s Japanese Sex Guide"- what's unique here to HowAboutWe.com? (Eytan is suggesting they could have done a better job, but he still loves the team.)
Focus your content marketing on vertical niches, then go broadDon't pitch USA Today - get some smaller successes first.
Oyster produced content (image galleries) for Shape Magazine (online) and others (such as the Huffington Post). Oyster always gets the attribution, mainly via a watermark on each image.
Similar to how Google provided AOL with search results (in exchange for a "enhanced by Google" credit). It put Google on the map.
Example of this strategy done wrong: Microsoft paid a ton of money to power Yahoo! search. They didn't negotiate for a nice, big "powered by Bing" mention (their current mention is tiny, nobody sees it). They missed the opportunity. This is a big mistake - if you're trading a business asset for exposure, maximize that exposure.
Oyster's content pieces have been everywhere (Eytan is sharing a slide now with many recognizable big publication logos). Oyster gets content on these sites daily.
Oyster traffic by quarter (slide chart) shows fast growth over the last few years.
Q and AQ from Rand Fishkin: What percentage of traffic is social vs content pieces vs organic? A: It's peaky so we don't get too granular. We haven't done great with social (not a meaningful driver of our traffic).
Q from Rand: How do you find the people who produce content for you? A: The core hotel content on Oyster are contract employees, trained by Oyster. We find people in the areas themselves (rather than fly people around). They're part-time contracted workers. The content marketing effort, though, is driven 100% by full-time in-house teams.
Q from Rand: Do you do influencer marketing (i.e. targeting notable people with audiences for coverage)? A: Not a lot. We generally focus on big audiences, HuffPo and similar.
Q: Have you guys seen any turning points (month/year) that you noticed a shift in Google organic traffic? Has your authority as a photo provider in the travel space pushed down local results (i.e. have photo results taken up SERP real estate that has hurt your traffic) A: We've seen big shifts in organic traffic, but overall we've been happy with recent Google updates. On the 2nd question, we've taken some hits in local Google traffic lately. We're going to talk to Google about fixing that.
Q: How did you reach out to HuffPo and develop that relationship? A: One of the key things is starting small - don't go right at the big guys. In some cases those relationships are outbound (targeting ~50 prospective places we'd like to be featured). As we get placements we find it easier to make inroads with new publishers (it's a "rich get richer" effect).
Q: How do you track traffic sources? What metrics for success are you using to evaluate your content marketing efforts (KPIs)? A: It's somewhat straightforward, we just look at referral data in analytics. As for KPIs, we like to look at returning/recurring visitors, when evaluating sources of traffic. We'd rather get fewer initial visitors with a higher rate of return.
Q: What tools do you use to attack the copyright problem? A: Queries on Google images generally. We've caught people cutting off our watermarks. But this is something we probably need to do a better job of. We're not so worried about the little players scraping/copying our content, because the only people outranking us for key terms now are the big players.
Q: What kind of tools do you use for keyword research to help determine targets? A: We focus on hotels that are perceived as "higher risk" for consumers. Jamaica for example. This helps us determine hotels that consumers are interested to research before they book.
Thanks to Eytan for a nice presentation and some great tips for leveraging content not just for links but for building brand awareness. Up next is the Let's Get Real session, where all speakers are invited to share 1-2 juicy tips the audience can put in action right away.
BUT you'd have to be here to get the tips (them's the berries folks). Join us next year, don't miss out on what Rand just called "the best marketing content I've seen at an event, period, including Mozcon."
P.s. The official photographer for the conference was David Zwickerhill. You can view more photos from the conference here.


text:
We recently reiterated a Neutral recommendation on United Therapeutics ( UTHR ).
While the company reported strong third-quarter results, United Therapeutics suffered a major blow in October with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issuing a complete response letter (CRL) for its new drug application for oral Remodulin (treprostinil). The company was looking to get oral Remodulin approved for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).
Although United Therapeutics said that it intends to gain approval for the candidate within four years, we have low visibility on the company's development plans for the candidate.
The company's lead product is Remodulin, an injectable formulation of treprostinil, indicated for the treatment of PAH in patients with New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class II-IV symptoms. Remodulin is approved for both subcutaneous (SC) and intravenous (IV) use. The other two PAH products in the company's portfolio are Adcirca (tadalafil) and Tyvaso.
United Therapeutics holds a strong position in the PAH market with three approved products targeting this indication. Lead product Remodulin continues to look very strong in both the IV and SC forms. EU approval for the IV formulation, received in late December 2011, should drive sales further. The company is looking to launch Remodulin in new territories including Japan and China. The Japanese market could bring in incremental sales of about $100 million.
Although we believe United Therapeutics' existing PAH product portfolio will drive strong top-and bottom-line growth, we remain concerned about the company's dependence on Remodulin for revenues.
Remodulin, which accounted for 57.9% of total sales in 2011, is currently facing a generic challenge from Sandoz, Novartis' ( NVS ) generic division. The company needs to develop products that could help make up for the loss of revenues in the event of genericization of Remodulin.
United Therapeutics currently holds a Zacks #2 Rank (Buy). Stocks that currently carry a Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) include Valeant Pharma ( VRX ) and Astellas Pharma ( ALPMY ).
NOVARTIS AG-ADR (NVS): Free Stock Analysis Report
UTD THERAPEUTIC (UTHR): Free Stock Analysis Report
VALEANT PHARMA (VRX): Free Stock Analysis Report
To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.